MaxBlast-Very strange problem

[chess9]

Two systems:
System A: P3v4x, PIII 600, Western Digital 15 gigger as C drive. Worked great.
System B: Dell Dimension, PIII 450, Western Digital 12 gigger as C drive. Worked great.

Both owners, who are friends, and friends of mine, purchased brand new Maxtor 20 gig, 7200 rpm drives yesterday from Costco. One installed his on System B as the D drive, with the Western Digital as the C drive. He used MaxBlast. Now he can't fully boot. Gets Dell splash screen, and POST through mem count, but it keeps rebooting spontaneously. Will not allow entry into bios.

On System A, I installed the Maxtor for my other friend, went into Bios, detected both hard drives, and booted to MaxBlaster. (WD as C; Max as D) Partioned the drive, and told it to copy the files from the Western Digital to the Maxtor. It started, then hung. I waited 45 minutes. No hard drive light, no apparent progress. So, I tried to reboot. It wouldn't reboot.
Maxtor was no help. They couldn't figure it out. I have all the master/slave jumpers set properly on both drives in both machines. I can read all the drives from a third machine that will boot, so the hard drives are fine. Neither machine will now allow access to the CMOS setup with or without the hard drives installed. I tried clearing both cmos', but to no avail. The cpus come on on both machines. Both of these machines worked great before we tried to install these Maxtors with the Western Digital drives.
I've installed quite a few hard drives, but have never encountered this problem. Is this a MaxBlast problem, or a problem with the co-residency of the two disparate drives, or am I missing something?

 

[Imaginer]

I have no idea why the system goes funky.

I too have a Western Digital and a Maxtor coexisting just fine. But what I did was use the Fdisk command after some frustration in REpartitioning my drives. Much better than that MaxBlast Software in my opinion.

Try taking the Maxtors out and see if anything is ok. Back up anything just in case. Then add on the Maxtor, let the Bios and system detect and boot into dos mode. Use Fdisk accordingly. Reset and Format your new drives and you are all set.

 

[chess9]

Imaginer: Thanks for the help. I tried to boot with the original western digital c drives. No luck. Then I tried to boot without ANY drives into the cmos. No luck. Then I installed a hard drive from my system that I know works. No booty!

I'm wondering if it is possible that the MaxBlast software wrote to rom? Why else would two perfectly fine systems refused to boot? This is truly wierd. By the way, the version of MaxBlast that came with the drives is Version 1.24S.

I guess I'm going to have to get 2 new Rom chips for these mobos unless someone has a clue why these two systms aren't booting.

Again, thanks for the try. And, yes, that's the last time I use MaxBlast!!

 

[Imaginer]

Try a boot disk and reinstall windows. Does it still detect the drives? Can you get to the bios still? Give the system a rest for awhile.

But I tried this once.

In order to boot back into the Western Digitals, you need to restore the boot sectors of the drive. Try using the Western digital disks and use some option called restore boot record or something like that.

But using this option might leave your hard drive blank and no data. That is why I suggested the back up. Also, use a boot disk to boot into the system for necessary back up.

 

[chess9]

Imaginer: The WD drives are fine. I installed them into another system and it booted fine with both. I can't even get a floppy to work because neither system will get that far. The Asus P3V4X won't even put up a screen! NADA, zip. The Dell won't go past the mem check before it spontaneously reboots. Very strange to have two machines do this!

Thanks.

 

[Edski]

It is [/b]impossible[/b] for Max Blast to write to your rom. It is a partitioning software, that is all. With system B, if you remove the maxtor drive, will it boot. If not, boot to the maxblast disk, go to advanced options, then ezbios setup. Check both drives to make sure that the ezbios overlay is NOT installed. That is what it sounds like to me on system B.

As for system A, are you even getting a bios beep? If not, take everything out and start from scratch, just mobo, cpu, and memory. It is very possible that something came loose while moving things around.

 

[dirtboy]

If you can't get into the CMOS on either machine without the drives installed, I'd say you have some other problems that need to be addressed first, and those problems may be causing your hdd's not to work.

 

[chess9]

Edski: I cannot get into either bios regardless of what I do. I've stripped both machines down to memory, cpu, and video. No boot for either one. On System B, the fellow got an error message when installing the Maxtor saying he needed a bios upgrade and it offered to install ez-bios, which he did. But his machine will not boot past the mem check. The A machine will not boot at all, though the cpu comes on. The A machine has a new mobo that worked just fine 4 hours ago. I cannot boot with a floppy because neither machine will get that far. These machines both give the appearance that the bios has been scrambled. I agree with you that MaxBlast should not address ROM, but why would two machines from two different people exihibit very similar behavior when installing Maxtor drives? Thanks for the help, Ed. I am truly stumped.

Dirtboy: You must be right. But what haven't I tried? Thanks, too.

 

[Edski]

Well, if you have the resources to do this, give it a try. Try all components in a working machine...memory, cpu,..... If they all work in other systems, the problem lies in the motherboard. Yes it is very possible for a motherboard to go bad this quickly, I have had it happen to me a couple of times. If you have a spare system to test the maxtor drives, I would boot to a floppy and run their Maxdiag on those two 20 gig drives. If they pass all 3 tests (Quick, Read, Write) then it is not the drive.

 

[chess9]

Ed: Yes, I installed all 4 drives in my personal machine and every one of them is fine. The one drive that was being copied TO (Maxtor from the system A) has only about 79 meg of data on it, but that data is readable. The Maxtor from System B has NO data on it, but my bios found it and Power Desk sees it. I just finished checking one of the cpus and it is fine. The other one comes on very clearly, so I don't think that is the problem. Sheesh! I am going to put my cpu in System A, just to cover that base, but....?

I note from Maxtor's site that MaxBlast is up to version 9.20M, yet they included MaxBlast plus Version 1.24s! I'm wondering if this version is an old version someone inadvertently included in some boxes? What version do you have?

Thanks, Ed. I really appreciate your thoughtfullness on this one!

 

[Edski]

The difference in the version numbers is not what you think. The one that you downloaded from their site is the latest version, the one that came with the drives just uses a GUI version, that is the difference.

 

[chess9]

Ed: Yes, I have the downloaded version which I've used before. This version on the floppy appeared to work just fine though. Well, I guess tomorrow a.m. I will have to rebuild these machines from the bottom up. I'm pretty convinced the rom chips are dead. Two motherboards going kaput in one day from the installation of a Maxtor drive is mondo bizarro, wouldn't you say?

Thanks, again.

 

[Jagators]

chess9, Have you tried resetting your bios to default values? It doesn't seem possible for two machines to go bad at the same time.

 

[chess9]

Jagators: I've cleared the cmos on both. No luck. They both will not let me access the bios. This may be THE weirdest hardware problem I've ever had. I'm hoping there is some simple explanation, something I've overlooked....I'd hate to think that MaxBlast is responsible for this mess. Does anyone know if the graphical version I have was recently released? Perhaps it has a bug in it. This version, Version 1.24S was released about April 18, 2000.

These hard drives were manufactured on May 27th in Singapore, so this batch may be new to the market.... Sheesh, I am completely stumped.

Thanks, Jagators, for the help.

 

[BigToque]

Can you use the new Maxtors to boot up in another system?

Could it be possible that somehow you may have fried an IDE channel?

 

[Edski]

Chess9, I will contact an engineer that I know from Maxtor and get you the latest versions of software. He is not there right now, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[chess9]

Stefan: Thanks for mentioning that IDE business. The system would still boot, wouldn't it? I thought of that and tried the secondary IDE, but still no boot. I would think the Primary IDE going out on two mobos in one day as a consequence of installing Maxtor hard drives using MaxBlast would be near zero.

I can read all the drives, so I assume it will boot. One of the drives, the Western Digital from System A, has an oem version of Win2K and wouldn't boot on my old machine, but I can read the files. Once I get the machine fixed that drive should boot. (Oem win2k is hardware specific, if I remember correctly.)

I'm also wondering if a virus could have done this. Both guys have AV software, though. Perhaps a virus got into the rom? I haven't seen a rom virus yet. That would be a nightmare. Also, these two gentlemen are friends and could have exchanged email with a virus. Ugh!

Thanks for the good thinking, Stefan.

Ed: Thanks for that. Ask him if he has any ideas, too! Sheesh...I'm brain dead right now.

 

[BigToque]

I'm remembering that one of my old hard drives not only had jumpers by the IDE connector (by the power connector), but also had a small set of jumpers right on the PCB.

I had never even noticed this before, and my computer wouldnt turn on at all (like your System A) until I had configured the jumpers on the PCB as well as by the IDE connector.

Check if there are some jumpers on the PCB.

[EDIT] Check the PCB for both the Maxtor AND Western Digital [/EDIT]

 

[resinboy]

I just got done with a Max Blast nightmare- I added a 20 gig as a master, and put my 13 gig WD as a back-up drive. I did the format and copy, but noticed I didn't see the copy progress window that Maxtor uses. After all the drive lights quit, I couldn't boot from the maxtor- I kept getting a "drive has an unknown format" error. Didn't lock up my bios, but wouldn't let me do anything with it. I swapped it to slave, and still couldn't read it. Tried to FDISK, no good. Only way I managed to get around it was to re-use the Max blast , and instead of formatting with 1 partition, I tried 2 for the hell of it, and it worked.

 

[chess9]

Stefan: I've got an old Seagate around here, I think, with jumpers on the pcb, but these are all limited to one set of jumpers. Good thinking, though!

 

[chess9]

ResinBoy: Doesn't sound like a very good experience with MaxBlast! Which version did you use, if you know? Did you do the unthinkable, call Maxtor?

Thanks for the help, but I can't even get into the bios!

 

[chess9]

ResinBoy: Also, what date was your drive manufactured and where? Thanks.

 

[resinboy]

software version 1.11m- I can't see the drive date- she's in the worst of 2 positions in my tower to see

 

[LBM1A]

Resin, just wanted to let you know I paying close attention to this! My Maxtor 20gig is due in tommorrow. I wish you the best of luck Chess! I may in your position soon!

 

[chess9]

LBM: I'd be disinclined to recommend MaxBlast at this point! Try a little fdisk/format. Maybe Microsoft isn't so bad after all!